{POEM}: SONG OF WAR

Song of War

You are the ones singing the songs of war,
Without learning the flaccid lyrics of grief.

You are the ones balding your throats,
Like the head of a Vulture,
To recite the chants of battle
Without learning the language of dirge.

You stand at the cross road of bleeding past,
Evoking the perilous masquerade of your heady ancestors;
The masquerade that laid millions of infants dead and tombless,
When it first saw the shade of the sun.
The masquerade that pumped blood out the eyes of your progenitors
And gouged tomorrow from their sights,
When it first danced to some ambitious drums of misspelt freedom.

Did your grandfathers tell you,
How thousands of mothers became barren?
Did your grandfathers tell you,
How thousands of husbands became memories of lamentation?
Did they tell you,
How children carried guns taller than them
And became bullets of a needless war?

Did your grandmothers tell you
That Biafra was a masquerade of a needless war
That only danced to the drunk songs of death?

Now,
You are the ones singing the eulogies of Biafra;
The perilous masquerade of a needless war
Without learning the lyrics of lost.

©Segun Michael.